


A Thousand Beautiful Things

by AngelinaVansen (catherineflowers)



Series: Beautiful Things [1]
Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: F/F, First Kiss, First Time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-29
Updated: 2018-05-29
Packaged: 2019-05-15 09:53:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14788256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catherineflowers/pseuds/AngelinaVansen
Summary: During a visit to an alien world, Seven of Nine discovers she has feelings for her Captain.





	A Thousand Beautiful Things

**Author's Note:**

> Written in the early 2000s.

By the desk in the Captain's quarters, I watch her finish dressing for the evening.

She is behind schedule; we were supposed to transport down to the planet twenty minutes ago. Everyone else is already there, attending the reception. But she is late, and she isn't even hurrying now. She is looking in a small wooden box for some specific earrings. She saw them there this morning, so she claims. 

She keeps talking, lit by the low lamp on her dresser. I'm not listening. I am only watching her. Trying to find some words.

I want to tell her that her dress makes mine look very plain. I want to speak of how wonderfully it shimmers with its thousand beautiful silver beads. Against the deep blue of the fabric, they look like stars from deep inside the universe, places where only Borg have been. 

I want to tell her how these things are precious. How I will think of them forever.

"Captain," I say instead. "You look very beautiful tonight."

She stops what she is doing. Stops the idle chatter I haven't been listening to. Stops looking for her earrings. For a moment I am concerned that I have spoken something offensive.

I didn't even mean to say it, not really. It is more of a thought than something you should say aloud. I know that.

But she comes over to me, a thousand points of light lit up, her eyes dark and serious on mine. I am nervous. I have never seen this look exactly. Perhaps her face just looks different with her formal make-up.

I step back a little as she approaches me. The backs of my thighs collide with her desk. She doesn't stop. Brings her arms around my neck and pulls my face to hers.

She kisses me. Her eyes closed, her mouth slightly open, she kisses me. 

I am overcome. The sensation hits me like a phaserbolt. Warm and dizzying and liquefying. I taste her, take a breath of her; not only her lips but her skin and her hair and her perfume. I feel her body, too, snug and curved against my curves. I hear the slow sigh of her breath from her lungs. Pressed against me.

Five point four six seconds. 

Then she breaks away, steps back from me. "Thank you," she says. 

I don't have time to react. I don't even have time to kiss her back. But when I see myself in the mirror above her dresser I am horrified by what I see. I am flushed, sweating. Dilated pupils. 

I am the picture of naked arousal, dressed in my dull plum sheath.

I am speechless. She is smiling. Enjoying me and my obvious pleasure. My obvious embarrassment at my pleasure.

"We should go," she says, smiling a distant, gentle smile. She forgets her earrings, collects her wrap. We leave together.

All the way to the transporter room, I walk right beside her, shaking. Hoping no one sees me. I can't look at her. I can't stop looking at her.

What am I supposed to say? Should we talk about it? What does this mean? I replay her kiss again in my thoughts, trying to decide the intentions behind it. 

Even down on the planet, I am not myself. The Doctor observes that I am pale. Uncommunicative. He doesn't understand. I hope he doesn't understand.

I can't seem to use my tongue. It still tastes of Captain Janeway's tongue. My abdomen aches where her breasts were against it. My leg feels branded where her leg was pressed.

I am certain everyone must know. It must be plain on my face. I can't hide it from my voice, and I can't stop my hands from shaking.

Captain Janeway is just as everyone expects. She moves about the venue, talks with everyone, eats from the buffet, imbibes the wine. She dances when it is required of her, once with the Guado Guide she has been negotiating with, once with Chakotay. She is charming, diplomatic and utterly, utterly captivating.

My ears seem to be able to pick her voice out through the noise of the crowd. I even seem to be able to hear her footsteps, individually on the floor. 

"Would you like to dance, Seven?" the Doctor asks me. 

"Yes," I say. Almost a gasp. I was right then. It is obvious. He must see the yearning on my face, understand the thoughts I have of holding her, one hand on her waist, one hand clasping her hand. That curious warmth that comes from her skin coming into my skin.

Then I realise. He means for me to dance with him. I lower my head and nod, letting him take my arm and lead me to the dance floor.

The Captain is not watching me. She is sharing a drink with the Guide and her face is professional. I don't think she's looked at me all evening. 

I dance with the Doctor, moving through the steps, focussing on the walls behind him. Looking at the shadows of everyone. Looking at the patterns they make.

Maybe I shouldn't be doing this. Thinking about the Captain. Maybe I should walk around this room, putting my feet on each piece of marble, talking to everybody. Smiling. Maybe I should let myself be swept along by the Doctor, ask one of the Guado to dance afterwards. Putting my feet in the places that the dance suggests.

Maybe that would make me human, more.

I take a drink and go outside to the balcony, looking out across the sweet-smelling land of the Guado city. The warm wind in my hair, blowing on my skin. Listening to living things, moving. Grass long in the gardens, trees filling out and rippling. My own breath, a little lost in it.

Further out, beyond the grounds, there is the city. Streets moving, buildings rising. The smell of late-night food and vehicle fuel. Every light's a being, I think, looking out there. At least one being. Every being having thoughts. Individually. 

I think of that. It's hard to understand that, when you have once been Borg.

It's the hardest thing, knowing I will never again hear the thoughts of another in my mind. It was once more natural to me than breathing.

"What are you thinking about?" asks the Captain from behind me.

I turn to face her. She has come out here alone, a glass in her hand. Strands of her hair blow across her face. Her face is lit up by the city.

"I was thinking about the Borg," I say honestly.

"Oh?" she says, but does not press further.

She comes to the edge of the balcony, the wind rippling at her dress, pressing it against the shape of her body.

"I don't think the Guado have encountered the Borg," she says.

"No," I agree. "Not yet."

She swallows deeply, and I realise that was the wrong thing to say. Now she is thinking about the devastation the Collective will cause to this world. About the people in the city before us. Their lives destroyed, their individuality taken away.

It is still a little difficult for me to remember that is something undesirable.

"Have you had a pleasant evening, Captain?" I ask her, to stop her thinking of it.

"Mmm," she murmurs, so quiet I barely hear her. "It's nice to get off the ship for a while."

"Yes, it is," I concur.

Then I decide to kiss her, the way she kissed me earlier.

I move close to her and turn her into my arms, noticing how her eyes look dark blue, the exact colour of the Guado night. Her skin is blank and white with light. I hold her face in my hands, framing it. She doesn't look as though she's going to protest. Stop me. She looks ... curious.

A strand of her hair blows into her mouth as I kiss her. It tangles against my tongue as I push it into her mouth. Feeling the softness of her lips on mine. Feeling the warmth and wetness inside her mouth. Tasting it. She tastes like drink, and food.

"Mmmm ..." she says. 

I kiss her again, pressing lips to her lips, to her cheeks, to her closed eyes. Breath stolen from my mouth by her mouth.

"Seven ..." she says.

"Captain ..." I echo.

She parts from me with a smile. I should not have said that. Perhaps I should have called her by her given name.

"Kathryn," she invites. Indeed.

She smiles. Looks up at me with her mouth wet from my mouth. Strokes my hair, tucks it behind my ear. "Will you come back with me tonight?" she asks in a whisper. "To my quarters?"

She gives me a questing, nibbling kiss. Coercive.

"For lovemaking?" I ask.

"Yes, for lovemaking," she replies softly, asking against my neck.

"Yes," I say.

"All right," she says. "Good. But discreetly, hmm?"  
I nod. She steps away from me, straightening her dress in the wind. Wiping her lips.

"Return to the ship," she tells me. "My door code ..."

"Is 676249," I finish.

"Yes," she says warily. Eyeing me.

"I was Borg," I say.

That makes her smile. "Wait for me," she says. "But don't let anyone see you."

"Of course not," I reassure. "I understand. It would be improper, wouldn't it."

She nods, then smiles, a little broader. "I must say you're taking it better than Chakotay."

This intrigues me. I was not aware that she had been intimate with the Commander.

"Oh, ancient history," she says with a wave of her hand.

I find I would not be particularly eager to explore that history. How strange.

She grabs my hand before I go. Squeezes it. She looks ... grateful. 

Grateful? I ponder that look over and over again in my mind as I go back to the transport coordinates. What has she got to be grateful to me for? It is a look that belongs on my face.

I walk through the gardens on my way back. They are lit up by the moons, and everything is glistening with this evening's rain.

I imagine myself in the future she was imagining, the one where the Borg will cut through this planet like a blade. Me as a drone, walking the very places I am walking now. My feet in places where my feet are walking now. My eye, the eye that was not-quite mine but powerful and painful all at once, looking. Flashing that dead blue laser beam on everything I see here. Analysing. Analysing. Finding it irrelevant.

Parts of me still do that. Parts of me don't react to anything. I am aware of that, but I am not sure that it will ever change, no matter how long I remain a human. I am worried it is more than a habit, now. There are parts of me that will behave like a Borg forever.

But it goes both ways too. I have parts of the Borg. The Borg also have parts of me.

In the Collective, I'm still stored and used by every drone, by every ship. Downloaded, uploaded. Acknowledged. Utilised. Parts of me still march through planets just like this, unblinking. Powerful. Immortal. Relevant. Adding to our own. 

Sometimes it's difficult to remember that was part of something evil.

But Kathryn's face. Her look of gratitude. Her face touched by light, and the lights on her dress. Her kiss, the texture of her tongue. The smell of her hair. I think of how it will be to throw these on myself, wrap them around me.

She has pulled me from the pull of the Borg, singlehanded.

She is the beauty of this planet as it is, chaos and disunity. Oh Kathryn. She is individuality incarnate, isn't she. The rash decisions, the unfathomable expressions. The hair, style changed so often. The different perfume every day. 

I beam aboard her ship, and it's like she's here with me already.

Irrelevance. Minutiae. The clenching of her hands behind her back. The twitch of brow and cheek and mouth. The smile, sliding up one side of her face. I feel this in her ship and it makes me want to hug the walls, skate myself along the bulkheads, watching everything.

It's all Kathryn.

I key her code in, unobserved. Sit on her sofa, knees together. I don't get anything from her replicator. I should wait to be invited any further.

I don't wait long. She enters her quarters only eleven minutes later. Discards her wrap, kicks off her shoes.

"Now," she says to me. Reaching out to me.

"Now?" I ask, getting up and going over to her.

"Now, Seven. Oh God, now ..."

The last word she breathes into my mouth as she tips her neck back to kiss me. Tongue entering my mouth and hands fondling me. My back, my buttocks, my breasts. Not waiting, not stopping. Beautiful.

I take hold of her leg and feel it, under her dress. Squeeze the fat and muscle and bone in her thigh. Hard. She moans and parts her legs so far I have to support her weight against the wall.

Inviting me to touch her intimately. Between her legs. Already with her hand between mine. 

I pick her up, carrying her easily, holding her spread legs open around me. I bring her to her desk. The nearest flat surface she can sit on while I take her clothes off.

She rests back on her arms and lets me disrobe her, laying aside that glittering dress on the chair, displaying herself to me without inhibition.

She's so pink underneath. Pink because of her heritage, but also her humanity. I run my hands across that pinkness, that softness. I don't have that. There are many places on me that are very grey and hard and Borg.

She sees my fascination. My wonder at her body. She lies back to let me look. Let me search her.

Her muscles shiver where I touch her. Her skin contracts. Her eyes are dark and huge and watch me as I stroke her. Her face is flushed with blood. 

Oh Kathryn. I am fascinated by her, by every beautiful pore and hair and vein. I touch them all with my fingers and palms and lips, tracing the patterns and the parts of her.

Kathryn taught me to do this. Kathryn taught me to look beyond the whole, to see the parts that make it work. To give every one its relevance.

Her breasts, moving up and down where she is breathing. Pink, white. Dark nipples. Each breath big and trembling with pleasure. I kiss the nipples, suck them between my lips and roll them with my tongue. She breathes again, and again, and again. Deep breaths.

Her ribs, being hammered by her heart. Beating hard, fast, aroused. I never even listened to my own heart doing this, and now I have my ear pressed firmly against her chest. 

She pulls me to her, impatient, dragging at my own clothing. 

Taking handfuls of my skin and squeezing them. Kissing me so hard it feels like teeth. Pulling my hair. Pulling me against her, over and over again, so my hips roll over hers.

I feel nature inside her, rising in me, as well. Something primal and forceful, overtaking the calm, rational woman. Now I want to take pieces of her and hold them, too. Squeeze them just beyond that point of pain.

She is arching up with her sex wet and silky and sensuous against my thigh. I mark her with my teeth like a beast, rip at her with my nails. Listen to her crying out, gasps of pain and grunts of pleasure.

I am lost. I'm not here, this isn't happening. I'll wake up and I'll have been dreaming, sweating slightly in my alcove.

I think how it would have been to have assimilated her. Maybe in the cube that day. After all, I was one with the drone that threw her to the floor and touched the skin on her neck, the pores and the hairs. I know how it feels already. But I do not know how it would feel to hold her firmly and thrust my nanoprobes inside her. Feeling them take her over, connect her with me.

Make our thoughts as one.

I feel her fingers questing once again between my legs. Rubbing a little, then penetrating. I am wet and aroused, and it doesn't hurt as I thought it might.

Her eyes ask me that question. Does it hurt, Seven?

Does it? Does it? Is there pain? Am I the first?

She wants so much to be the first, I think. It means something to her. She curls her fingers up inside me, and something happens.

For a moment, I think I will urinate. Then my breath won't come. My face is hot and tense, muscles almost hurting. Then it is like being at transwarp, hurled through the universe, too much to control. Not enough thought and too many stars, too fast to count them. 

I land on top of her, my senses returned in a rush. Red and crying a little, moving involuntarily around her fingers. Holding them inside me.

"Oh Seven," she says, a look of victory on her face now.

Is she the first? This is what she wants to know.

I bury my face in her neck, as if I could recover my breath there. Then I stand up away from her, letting her see me as well. Letting her see the Borg and the human mixed. The grip of the implants, the grey of the flesh.

"Accompany me to your bedroom," I ask.

"Take me there," she demands.

I imagine the assimilation process again. Implants sprouting from her, the fear dying in her dying eyes. Her resistance proving futile. 

I have seen it, performed it, so many times.

She would comply.

Then I would escort her, hair dropping, veins darkening, to an assimilation chamber, where her biological distinctiveness would be added to our own.

She is kissing me as we go to her bedroom, hands in my hair, pulling out the pins so it falls out of the pleat. Into her hands.

Already I would feel her, inside my mind. Her knowledge inside the Collective. Sorted. Dispassionate. Processed.

Her eyes, so close to mine, still open. Wet tongue playing in my mouth, expectant. Wanting. Hips swaying against my thigh. Again and again.

"Touch me," she whispers as we fall into her bed. Voice full and throat sounding thick. I think of how her voice would sound if she were speaking the words of the Collective. Flat. Arrogant. Metallic.

Never.

I kiss her and kiss her, trying to show her something, show her what she gave me. Show her how much I have to give back now. I am human. I am human, here is my humanity. This, Kathryn, this is what you gave me. The Borg don't love. 

Reaching inside her with two fingers, held and holding all at once. Caressed by her sexual juices. Caressed by her soft moans in breath on my shoulder.

I have to please her. Release her. Her body tense, hands biting at the sheet beneath us. Neck taut. She's not looking at anything.

Her face flares with pleasure and she jerks upwards. Then is released, writhing helplessly in my arms. A moment of sharpness followed by a moment of softness. 

How like my life so far.

"Oh yes," she says. "Oh yes ... oh yes ... oh yes ... oh yes." In time with the pumping of her orgasm. "Oh Seven." 

She melts against me, kissing and hot. Belly quaking a little. Her naked flesh slightly sticky and musky. I slip my fingers out of her body.

"I'm sorry, Seven ..." she husks.

I smile at her, not sure what to say. How to phrase what I want to say. How difficult it is for me sometimes.

"I'm so sorry, we shouldn't have done that ..." she whispers. "I shouldn't have done that."

I look at her eyes, wondering how to interpret that. Is it a joke or guilt or fear of being caught?

She sits up, naked, and turns her back to me to sit on the edge of the bed. Her spine curved like the plane of the Guado moons. Lit up by the lamp. Naked. Silent.

I am uncertain. 

"Captain ..." I say. Automatically.

She lets out a short laugh.

"Kathryn," I correct. "Don't be sorry."

She does not respond. I remain silent.

Eventually, she turns back to me with those noble eyes she has at functions. At meetings. For diplomacy.

"I am sorry, Seven. I hope you understand."

There is something final about that. Dismissive. I look at her and hold her gaze as I get up off her bed to find my clothes. She looks at me too, sad. Pitying. 

I put my clothes back on.

Brush the fabrics over my implants. See my Borg hand. See my Borg flesh. See with the pale green of my one Borg eye. Feel the nanoprobes in me, filling me with strength. Being parts of me, thousands of them.

Picking my hairpins up from her carpet. Twisting my hair back. Watching her. Naked and pink, lips slightly apart.

I think of going to her now, taking a handful of that sweat damp hair and pulling her head back to expose her neck. Filling her with nanoprobes. Show her what weakness is. How humanity will fail her.

How it collapses. How it is weak, and can be hurt.

How my human eye is full of tears, and my mouth tastes bitter. How this would never have happened if I was still Borg.

I see her dress, discarded on the floor. Beautiful. Lights in my eye, the stars of the Guado sky.

"I do not understand," I tell her. My voice angry. Choked.

She looks a little surprised. Perhaps she had expected me to accept it.

"We can't be ... lovers, Seven," she says. Patiently. "I thought that was clear."

"You said we could not let anyone else become aware."

"Yes, but it ... there's more than that too."

I look at the floor. Full of rage.

"If you ... if you stay with me tonight, it won't stop there, will it. Not for either of us."

I look back up at her. "We would become ... lovers?" I ask. Unsure really what she means.

"Yes. Emotionally attached to each other. I ... we can't do that right now, Seven."

"I believe we just did," I say.

"That was wrong," she replies. "I shouldn't have let things go that far."

"You invited me back to your quarters."

"Yes, I ... I don't know. It was the wine ... the planet ... damn it Seven, it was that beautiful dress! You have any idea how stunning you looked tonight?"

"I ..." This stuns me. I opt for politeness. "Thank you."

"Don't thank me. Don't thank me, Seven. God ..." Her eyes are also full of tears.

I go to her, fall on my knees in front of her. Take her hands.

"Don't," she says. "You should go."

"I don't want to go."

"You must."

"No, I cannot. I am already emotionally attached to you, Kathryn. It would make no difference if I remained here for the night or not."

"No, don't say that. We can't. We can't let this get serious."

"I am serious now."

She stops talking. Lets her eyes fill up. Brim over. Lets her tears fall down her cheek. I imagine those fine-boned features surrounded by implants. Junctions. Interfaces.

I am afraid that that will happen. The Borg are so strong. Stronger maybe even than Kathryn. I do not think she can outwit them forever. 

I reach out to her and press my lips to the path of each of her tears. Tasting the salt.

"It is you who looked beautiful tonight," I say softly.

She kisses me. Softly, questioningly, then deeper and with more passion. Crying as she kisses me, and I swallow her sobs.

"Oh Seven," she whispers. "Seven. Don't ..."

"You don't need to cry, Kathryn," I tell her. "It doesn't matter."

"It does matter!" she cries. Angry at me a little too I think. "I'm the Captain of a Starship, I'm responsible for the lives of all of these people. Everything I do matters!"

I look at the carpet for a long time, still on my knees in front of her. I do not speak for ages. I think of the world below us, moving in its orbit. One half night and the other day. All of the other worlds out there, the ones we have explored, the ones we will explore in the future. The billions of individuals. Their lives, their thoughts. Their cells and atoms.

I think of the vastness of that and it is almost too much.

But at least I am able to. At least I have the ability to think of individuality.

"There are bigger things than that, Kathryn," I hear myself say.

She looks at me without any words.

"There is the blood in our veins," I say. "There are the thoughts in our minds. There are our emotions and experiences and acquaintances. Below us on the planet there are billions of individuals who function as distinct entities. Those things are bigger than your duties, Kathryn. Bigger than your responsibilities."

I stop to look out of the window, wondering.

"Sometimes, I have to remind myself that if the Borg came here now, all those things would stop."

She remains quite silent. Once again I worry that I have misspoken. 

"Are you telling me," she says eventually. "That you believe the needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many?"

I think about that. 

I take a deep breath. Sorting the words in my head. Words are so inefficient sometimes. 

"I have come to believe that one cannot exist without the other," I tell her. "The many are flawed without the ability to exist as one, and yet the one is ..."

"Lonely," she completes. Letting the word trail off into the darkness. Holding it on her tongue for a moment.

"You have shown me that, Kathryn. It is my own paradox, and yet you have shown me the way to be comfortable with both halves of myself."

She looks at me, her tears shining in her eyes again.

"Allow me to give that back to you," I ask her. "You needed me tonight, otherwise you would not have asked me here. You would not have made love to me. Allow me to provide the support that you have provided me with."

"Oh, Seven," she says, and I think she is truly taken aback. I do not think she realised.

She puts her arms around me once again, and falls against me like the ghost of wind. She kisses me. Tells me that she loves me. Tells me that she's grateful. I say I am grateful also.

She offers me no promises, and I am certain she would break them anyway. Inside her, she's conflicted, just like I am. But she needs, she needs like I do and she's here and now and she doesn't want to let me go.

She cannot help herself. I hold her and I feel the universe, beating in her chest. Think of every molecule of blood and water in her body. But I also think of every star, spread out outside the hull. 

The big and the small.

All night I think of it and hold her, never sleeping, understanding once again the magnitude of everything and Kathryn.


End file.
